


Please don't touch (if you don't mean it)

by TheQuiet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Post-Time War (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQuiet/pseuds/TheQuiet
Summary: The Ninth Doctor is locked out of his TARDIS on Earth, trying to deal with his trauma from the time-war. Unfortunately those two arguing idiots are very distracting and, oh. That's another TARDIS... it seems his future self is one of those idiots. Fantastic.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 178





	Please don't touch (if you don't mean it)

The last place the Doctor wanted to be right now was Earth. After ending the time war and regenerating, he had floated in the Vortex for long enough to lose track of his time-sense, letting grief tear him apart as his mind called out frantically and unsuccessfully for another Time Lord presence. 

The TARDIS had tried her best to comfort him, singing softly into his head to help heal as much telepathic damage as she could. He was grateful for his ship’s presence, but clearly she had decided he needed to start moving on.

Landing in London, the Doctor had hesitantly stepped outside, settling a heavy leather jacket over the sweater he’d spent the last week wearing. The noise was too loud against his Time Lord senses, and he wrinkled his nose as he was assaulted with the thick stench of humanity he had clearly forgotten.

Freezing momentarily after seeing a blonde fringe that reminded him of Jo, he felt the urge to run far away from anyone who had once viewed him as a friend. After what he’d done, he didn’t deserve any kindness.

But the TARDIS, the meddling irritation she was, had locked the door on him, and no amount of frustrated yelling and gentle petting could convince her to open it again.

So here he was, stuck on Earth, and sitting on a park bench as he tried to regulate his breathing and clear his mind of the dark depression that was constricting his chest.

He was so focussed on his breathing that it took him too long to recognise the sound of his TARDIS dematerialising. Jumping up in panic he looked to where he’d landed only to see the blue box unchanged from when he’d left it. He turned around in confusing to see a second TARDIS fading into view and set his face as neutrally as possible, unwilling to give away any future knowledge or pain to one of his past selves. 

As this second TARDIS became more solid, he could hear a slight screeching interspersed with its regular groaning, and it was clear something was wrong. When the TARDIS finally stalled to a halt with a loud bang, the doors were showed open and a billowing cloud of black smoke poured out.

There was the sound of a loud curse, and a blonde woman stumbled out as though she had been shoved, followed by a dark-haired man in purple coat. 

The man slammed the door closed behind him, and whirled around to face the blonde woman. 

“It told you that I should have driven,” he growled, moving threateningly toward her.

The woman seemed entirely unbothered by his aggression, crossing her arms and jutting her chin at him.

“Don’t pretend this is my fault,” she said, glaring back. “If you’d just let me adjust the spatial converters we would have been fine.”

“The spatial converters burnt out weeks ago! You were supposed to replace them but instead I had to rewire your entire configuration to sub-route the—“

“—I did replace them!” she interrupted. “You were with me on Trolviix IV, you saw me buy the parts!”

“Then why weren’t they fitted to the console?” he said, voice getting louder.

“Because you stole a Zylerian grenade and I was a bit distracted trying to keep us from getting arrested, so I may have forgotten to install them when we got back!” she shouted.

The two glared at each other for a moment, and the Doctor was worried he’d have to intervene to stop his future self from killing what seemed to be a companion.

Eventually the man dropped his gaze, and raised it with softer eyes.

“Truce?” he asked hesitantly. “Since we’re….” his mouth curled in clear discomfort. “Since we’re both somewhat at fault.”

The woman’s face softened too, and she reached a hand out to rest against his wrist, laying it on the purple jacket cuff, just above the edge of his bare skin.

She took in a deep breath, and nodded.

“Truce,” she said, and then softer. “We agreed to try make this work, yeah?”

The man swallowed, “Yeah”.

The Doctor found himself immensely uncomfortable with the scene that was unfolding, and almost angrily confused to see that he was so close to a companion in the future. He cleared his throat, and in a rough northern accent he interrupted whatever moment the two were having.

“And just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man he was talking to, the man he knew must be his future self, looked at him with no recognition, just a slight veneer of disinterest and disgust.

“Excuse me?” the man ground out, anger building behind his dark eyes.

“I said, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Consorting with… with companions.”

“Companions? What are y—oh.” The anger vanished from his expression and he turned to look at the woman with a gleeful expression.

“Is this…?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, looking embarrassed.

The man let out a slightly manic giggle, turning sharply back to face the Doctor.

“Well, hello,” he purred, leaning right into the Doctor’s face, forcing him to take a step back. “It is so…thrilling to see you.”

“That’s enough,” the woman said, brow furrowing. She looked directly at the Doctor as she pulled the man back by his coat. “We don’t need any paradoxes today. Again.”

“But Doctor,” he said, bottom lip jutting out. “We could have so much fun.”

It took a moment for the Doctor to realise he was talking to the woman, to…the Doctor.

“Oh,” he said, and the man giggled again.

“Yeah.”

“You’re me?”

“Yep.”

“Huh,” he said, taken off guard. “Great accent.”

“Likewise,” she beamed in response. “Love a bit of northern, me!”

He grinned back, feeling a sense of the comfort and identity that he’d been missing settle back on his shoulders. 

“Don’t know about the coat though,” he frowned. “Or the suspenders.”

“Oi!” she said indignantly. “Better than tugboat captain there! And I love this coat, Rosa Parks fixed this coat!”

“Really?” he perked up. “Rosa Parks?”

“Yes! It’s brilliant there was this—“

“Oh, please, Doctor. You’re going to make me throw up,” the man groaned. “Can we please go five minutes without talking about one of your little human projects?”

The new Doctor rolled her eyes, “I haven’t taken you to earth for thirty years, you can’t complain about this again.”

“Thirty years is nothing, at least make up the extra hundred and fifty you owe me before climbing onto that particular pedestal.”

“You agreed to much more than seventy—“

“What the hell is going on?” the current Doctor yelled. He looked to his future self, “one hundred and fifty years? How are you talking about travelling with a human for so long?”

“A human?” the man sneered around the words. “I’m hardly one of your little pets.”

“You shouldn’t—“ the new Doctor began.

“Please, love,” he cut her off. “If this was going to affect timelines you would have gagged me as soon as we saw you.”

“I might still do that.”

He gave her a heated look, “and I look forward to it. But right now, I have a new toy.”

She shoved him hard in the shoulder, and the current Doctor could see that she wasn’t bothering to hold back her strength. Whoever this future companion was, he seemed incredibly durable, something that was probably for the best if he was going to travel with the Doctor in the future. Humans died too easily around him, always in danger and unable to save themselves.

His thoughts were darkening once again, and his breath was becoming shallow. It wasn’t just humans, he remembered, it was Time Lords too. He was the one who had slaughtered his entire species he was the one who had—

“Theta.”

That snapped him out of it, and he jerked his head to look into the concerned eyes of the other man, feeling soft, cool palms cradling his face.

“Did you just call me—“

“Theta,” the man said shakily, and suddenly his eyes were so much older.

The current Doctor felt tears gathering in his eyes, and the emptiness in his mind pulsed against the heavy barriers he had put up. He could feel the ground against his knees and shins, he must have fallen. And oh, his face was wet and he was shaking while the man dragged his thumbs across his cheeks. He could hear a gasping sound, and it took a moment to realise it was coming from him.

“Please,” he choked out. “Who are you?”

The man’s lips were trembling and the current Doctor hardly noticed as he steadied himself by looking at the new Doctor. She gave him a shaky smile, swallowing roughly and pulling her arms tight across her chest, heartbreaking gratefulness in her eyes.

“It’s me,” he whispered a breath away from the current Doctor’s lips. “It’s me… Koschei.”

And the Doctor collapsed.

He buried his face as tight as he could into his oldest friend’s chest, “Koschei,” he was babbling, over and over again. “My Koschei, you’re here, you’re alive…My Koschei.”

The Master cradled the Doctor tightly against himself, at a loss of what to do. His own Doctor moved to sit behind him, resting her back against his as her younger self tired himself out with sobs.

“I didn’t know,” he said softly. “When I…when I did the same it wasn’t like this.”

He felt her shift, and he hand reaching back toward his, and he met it as she squeezed his fingers.

“You were angry,” she said, and this was the most peacefully they had discussed Gallifrey’s second destruction. “And you had the drums to block out the emptiness and then the relief from losing the drums. I was just tired. An old man who wasn’t allowed to die and my mind… it was so empty and severed it hurt too much.”

He squeezed her hand in apology, and felt the movement of her exhale against his back.

“I think…” she was speaking tentatively, and he could feel her uneasiness press through their loosely closed mental link. “If I knew everything I know now. About what they did to you, and what they did to me. I think I’d be relieved to see them burn.”

The last sentence was barely spoken aloud, and if the Master had been a lesser species he knew he wouldn’t have heard her.

“I did it for you, you know?” he said, in a voice just as quiet.

“I know.” There was unspoken gratitude there, underlined with guilt, but the Master knew this wouldn’t be as raw a wound between them as it had been.

When the Doctor’s past self eventually woke up, he could feel a hand gently carding through his hair. The sky was dark, and he sat up carefully looking away from where the touch was coming from. He couldn’t bear to have the dream ripped away from him.

“Doctor?” a voice asked, and oh. It wasn’t a dream.

“Master,” he said, trying to sound neutral, but so full of joy and relief he knew his old friend wasn’t at all fooled.

The Master was beautiful in this new regeneration he noticed, now that he was properly looking. He looked so soft, but his eyes and grin were just as sharp as they had been in every single one of his bodies.

The Doctor raised a hand to stroke the Master’s beard, watching as his eyes fluttered closed and he let out a full-bodied shudder. Feeling encouraged, the Doctor leaned forward slowly and pressed his lips against the other man’s, feeling them open slightly with a sigh as they moved gently against each other.

A throat clearing broke the spell, and the Master pulled away with a quick bite at the Doctor’s bottom lip.

The Doctor looked at his future self, who was clearly trying to hide her amusement as the annoyance he knew was displayed on his face.

“C’mon, Master,” she said. “The TARDIS has fixed herself up, time to go.”

“Yes, dear,” he sighed, and gave the current Doctor an exasperated look. “Always interrupting, aren’t you?”

He pressed a final kiss to the Doctor’s nose before standing up.

“Go find a new pet to help you with all these emotions,” he said, amused resignation in his tone. “You’ll see me soon enough, love.”

The Master walked back to the TARDIS as the Doctor’s future self raised her hand in farewell. He nodded back and stood up himself, walking back to his own TARDIS. He placed a hand against her door in gratitude and she hummed back with a reminder to erase his memories.

The last thing he saw before clearing his mind was his future self-raising herself onto her toes to place a kiss against the Master’s lips, her left hand glinting against his cheek, and the Doctor smiled. She was wearing their wedding ring again.


End file.
